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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does the famed rabbi travel in the parable?

2. What does Michaela do when Jakob tells her about Bella?

3. Who is Petra?

4. How does Ben react to the sight of the harbor at Idhra?

5. What does Ben picture about Jakob's journals?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Jakob's work in Greece?

2. What does Ben say about lightning?

3. What does Ben recall about his father and mother when Ben is growing up?

4. What theme does Ben incorporate into his thesis?

5. What does Ben find in Jakob's study?

6. How does Ben compare Petra's skin and lightning imprints?

7. How does Ben's father escape a Nazi camp?

8. How does Ben's relationship with Petra evolve?

9. How are Ben's parents described?

10. What is the significance of the color yellow?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Athos tells about ancient Biskupin culture and his work to preserve the ruins. After the war, he learns that the Nazis had destroyed the excavations and killed Athos's colleagues shortly after he spirited Jakob to safety. It is the basis for Athos's belief that Jakob is responsible for saving him, more so than vice versa. Jakob meditates on how prisoners are forced to dig up the mass graves of early victims of Nazism as the perpetrators seek to cover up evidence. He pictures workers forced, like the stone carriers of Golleschau, to do the unthinkable: handle the gory remains of the dead.

1. Why do you think it is significant that the Nazis destroyed archeological ruins or historical sites? Discuss in depth the implications and what you believe may or may not have been lost in such destruction. Use examples from your own life and "Fugitive Pieces" to support your answer.

2. Discuss what you think might be the reasons Athos believes Jakob saved his life. Do you agree? Why or why not? Use examples from your own life and "Fugitive Pieces" to support your answer.

3. Discuss the mental and emotional tolls that must have been taken on the workers forced to do the handling of so many murdered Jews. Use examples from your own life and "Fugitive Pieces" to support your answer.

Essay Topic 2

"Fugitive Pieces" belongs to the historical novel genre. Discuss the following:

1. Define the literary term "genre" and give several examples of three other genres in addition to the historical novel genre.

2. Discuss two reasons why it might be useful to label a text by genre and two reasons it might be disadvantageous to label a text by genre.

3. What do you think is the difference between a historical novel and a historical novel mystery?

Essay Topic 3

History and memory share time and space and every moment is really two moments. Examples are how the Nazis and the Lublin scholars view the destruction of holy books, how Nazis and mothers in Lódz react to the soldiers "catching" infants on their bayonets, and how a woman in Birkenau carries a photograph of her husband and daughter under her tongue in order not to be separated from them. Jakob cannot resist reading the horrors of history because he needs to know where Bella actually dies.

1. Explain your ideas as to why history and memory might be two different moments. Use examples from your own life and "Fugitive Pieces" to support your answer.

2. Explain the type of internal change must occur in a soldier in order for a decent or ordinary person to become the type of individual who would toss an infant on his bayonet. Include what people in society today might learn from such a transformation. Use examples from your own life and the text to support your answer.

3. Explain, in depth, how Jakob reading of the Holocaust horrors is related to Jakob not knowing what happened to his sister. Use examples from your own life and "Fugitive Pieces" to support your answer.

(see the answer keys)

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